Plan to restrict highly skilled foreign workers could be a boon for India
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
> The H-1B program provides American companies with cheap, temporary contractors who often work longer hours than Americans and take on the monotonous programming jobs Americans scorn.
I don't even know where to start. It's the same paradoxical position that journalists have always taken on the H1-B program: that those granted visas are better, faster, and cheaper than American labor while simultaneously relieving the (implicitly higher-skilled) native workforce of "monotonous" (i.e. low-skill and repetitive) work.
So, they're higher skilled yet are put to work on low-skill tasks? This is a fantastical proposition.
Correct. And your snarkiness aside, it's true. I have several (Indian) cousins and a couple of uncles / aunties (came as Mainframe / COBOL programmers) who have attested to the same.
Even in the Financial Services companies I interned at ( Goldman) and worked at in the past, I've noticed by way of water cooler discussions and whispers that Indian and Chinese H1B works get significantly lower pay -- I'm talking a 30% to 40% lower pay -- than their (mostly white) American counterpart. Many in the exact same Job Title, Role / Grade and Job Description.
We also used to offload our Unit Testing and documentation work to these H1B and they did it without complaining. Most of them dream of getting their Green Card and freedom when they can charge Market rate and not be bound to their H1B sponsor / employer.
Yet, time and again we see that the emperor has no clothes: these programs are used to import labor from overseas because it's cheap.
If we are too stupid to see the benefits we derive from making them part of our nation I would rather we send them home.
Leaving the status quo as is would be the worst option.
Sure I'd reform the program, but I am glad that they can come here and so are they. I would be upset if they couldn't anymore and so would they.
Sorry to say, I don't think reforming the program with applicants in mind is on the table in this administration.
:( Unit Testing shouldn't be considered low-skill monotonous work.
> "monotonous" (i.e. low-skill
> and repetitive)
And then there are the companies that actually need skilled engineers who pay really high salaries, but only apply for the people who they actually want.
So make it an auction instead of a lottery.
10,000 visas available this year? Great, the 10,000 highest paid workers get in.
Edit: It was pointed out below that this wouldn't be fair to recent college grads, so perhaps it could be split on age or years of experience or something like that.
Another solution would be to automatically convert student visas to H1B after they graduate from an accredited institution.
You can see how this will help. Check out the data[0]. Wipro, a standard Indian body shop, is paying their H1Bs a median of 69K. Netflix is paying a median of 169K, with about 100 jobs over 200K (and a few above 500K). Google and Microsoft are a little lower than Netflix.
[0] http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=wipro&job=&city=&year=All+Y...
The Washington Post will support this drive fully, as it always has, the campaign isn't new after all. But now there is a palpable threat the vigour and determination will be increased dramatically. Where are the engineers being paid multi-millions for inventing and building stuff? Never heard of one unless they owned the company. Where are the senior managers, loads of them in every fortune 500 company and beyond.
The Washington Post will support this drive fully, as it always has
It if really is flagged as "politics" that would be a shame and would certainly reflect badly on y-combniator given the founders broadcast of their views on the matter.
The whole concept of "flagged as politics" is actually absurd in this forum.
I wonder if what you say is true and how one would find out.
Given the number of comments, in this case I think the discussion may have triggered the "overheated discussion detector" algorithm, which will move a submission down.
Human psychology being what it is, we pay attention to what happens to topics that interest us, in particular if it's negative. This gives us a biased view. I think if you were to do a study of submissions on HN, it wouldn't likely support a view that the mods or the HN algorithms are doing anything untoward. (I'd personally be interested in seeing such a report regardless of the results.)
I think I may have been unclear when I mentioned the number of comments with respect to triggering the overheated discussion detector: I think its based on comment rate rather than absolute number. (The exact rules of the site aren't open.) Yesterday a post was sitting at number 1, with a comparable number of votes to the one in the number 2 slot. As the number of comments skyrocketed (over a hundred in a couple of hours), it plummeted in rank even as it continued to be upvoted. And the topic had nothing to do with YC or even business, for that matter.
There is one other behavior that may be at play. User flags will affect ranking even prior to the '[flagged]' tag appearing. This could also be the case for either of these submissions.
Also, please be aware that flagging is nearly always a result user flags, not interference by the mods. Likewise, the algorithmic actions are automatic, not reviewed and applied by mods on a case by case basis. I've seen reference to the mods adding weight to a post, but this I believe is few and far between. I haven't seen this mention in months. And from a practical standpoint, the mods are just two guys. They do their best in tending to the forums, but they're not watching the site 24/7. They're not reviewing every submission.
Nowadays the more sober people that I know shy away from the opportunity, preferring European research institutions and Nordic or Germanic engineering companies, or just staying home in Latin America or Asia given that the wage gap has tightened considerably and the cost of living in desirable American locations has gone up astronomically.
It's the sort of thing that panders to the short-term nationalistic tendencies, but the impact will be felt a decade or two from now. Building up and maintaining intellectual prestige takes much more effort than it does to destroy it. Not to mention that there's more eagerness to set up engineering shops outside of the US than ever before.
> the cost of living in desirable American locations has gone up astronomically
They financialised housing. It's killing the west. It's creating nothing, it's appropriating wealth.
Sad to see that other thread on what people would do if they could afford it. So many cited their mortgage as the blocker. In the same thread some guy cited his 400k annual bonus for high frequency trading.
Rent is a way to select residents according to how much value they can produce by living there. Even though it's wasted money, it's also as very good selection filter.
We should try to suppress the % of economic rent.
Truth be told, immigrating to the US has been tricky for decades, if not longer - historically it is a very popular country to immigrate to, but there are filters currently founded on xenophobia/nationalism/racism/etc. These speculated changes aren't really much different in that vein, except that it closes a loophole that is abused. There are more guaranteed ways to get into the US, such as the L-1 visa. There are also ways to get an H-1B visa without going through the lottery.
there are filters currently founded on xenophobia/nationalism/racism/etc.
There's more people doing startups in their home country. More SV companies running satellite offices outside of the US to court talent that is unwilling to move to the US. More countries that are seeing the value of a strong software industry acting accordingly.
Not all of it has to be Valley-style startups funded by venture capital. There's a lot of traditional industries that don't need that funding model that are realizing that most talent doesn't actually live in California.
By now I know of many cases of people who have moved from SF after being courted through visas who moved back home or to offices in the EU, and many PhD candidates who ended up going to France, Switzerland, Germany and Spain to complete their PhDs, where the academic environment lends itself to a better work-life balance and high quality of contributions.
Mind you, this mostly applies to immigrants from Latin America, who have goals that may be different from Asians and Europeans. Still makes it a relevant observation.
The actual text of the bill only effects employers whose workforce is at least 15% H-1Bs (higher thresholds exist for employers with 50 or less employees).
The Attorney General can prevent an employer from petitioning for any alien (H-1B, L-1, nonimmigrant, immigrant, etc.) for a period of 1, 2 or 3 years (depending on willfulness and similar criteria) if it is found that a non-exempt H-1B displaced an American worker.
The current definition of exempt H-1B is: $60k salary OR a Masters degree.
The new definition of exempt H-1B will be: $100k salary.
The relevant statutes are here: http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=%28title:8%20section:...
The bill modifies (n)(3)(B).
The 15% and other thresholds are in (n)(3)(A).
The sanctions the Attorney General may impose are described in (n)(2)(E). Random inspections by the Secretary of Labor are described in (n)(2)(F).
The 1-3 years are defined in (n)(2)(C)(i)(III), (n)(2)(C)(ii)(II), and (n)(2)(C)(iii)(II) which (n)(2)(E) refers to.
If it was instead auctioned to the highest bidder, then we wouldnt get companies undercutting American jobs.
Don't just give the visa to someone randomly. Give it to the company who is willing to pay a 50k tax bill.
If the employee is worth it, then they will have no problem paying the bill.
If other companies don't like it, then they should make their salaries competitive.
One theory is that software is concentrated in SV because employee turnover is so fast in that line of work, it's quickest to find a new job in SV as opposed to anywhere else. The dominance of SV is people taking a salary hit to insure against catastrophic outcomes, i.e. running out of savings/unemployment and health insurance.
Why not have a commission decide on how big the shortage is and then issue green cards depending on occupation? Whoever wins one can work for whomever is pleases him, instead of being tied to the employer for years and years. Yes, I know it's possible to change jobs, but it's not for those with weak stomachs or dependents.
I agree that work permission should be either open or open after the first year, though. It's a huge artificial inefficiency to have talented people stuck in a sub optimal place for years just due to fear of losing residency if they change jobs.
High cost of labour acquisition, IMO, is a huge contributor to "workplace" abuse in black markets and debt is the mechanism of modern slavery.
But you can also solve this by just having minimum 100k+ salary requirements.
Chattelizing human beings
The more we learn the less we know.
This is reflected in not only the volumes of Indian candidates hired in SV but also their seniority with a disproportionate number of South East Asian CTOs at fast growth companies.
The only company that I worked where this was not the case, it was a company that didn't care much about the quality of engineers, and it was friends hiring friends type of things (mostly Indians hiring each other). The quality of engineering become poor, and I left after a bit.
Maybe you are suffering from Dunning-Kruger yourself and vastly overestimating your own skill relative to others.
Before you trash everyone from a specific nationality in xenophobic manner, Care to post your own genius qualifications? Maybe we can then determine what you mean when you say average in context of your occupation/employer.
Somehow implicit xenophobia and racism is fine on Hacker News as long as its directed against asians and indians.
If you establish an arbitrary boundary, it won't make sense.
Because how the lottery is structured, anyone who went to an american college for undergrad (4 years) plus two years of OPT, has lower chances than someone who just did a masters degree in an american university (1 year), and equal chances with anyone else in the world.
Anyone who spent first 6 years of their adult life in the US is much more likely to adjust to the american lifestyle than than anyone else.
Half of the students that graduate from my department cannot calculate stoichiometry reliably, and they are a state college, issue a four-year degree and are properly accredited.
As for fitting in, back when when Soviet Russia came apart we had quite a few Russians at my university. They were all academics in their mid-40s and managed extremely well.
1. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/news/25-us-univ....
In every situation where I've seen that situation happen, projects go completely off the rails. I don't think its because their foreign, but, I think people expect too much of these foreign workers (because they were getting that from local workers). They require far more supervision, both on a technical level (making sure the code they commit is sane) and on a managerial level (making sure they're actually committing code), and by far the worst offender, actually making meaningful progress towards the goal.
To explain what I mean by meaningful progress, I was brought in to figure out what was going on with a telephony app project that was off shored to Indian developers (think: twilio but definitely not twilio). The team of about 20 offshore developers had been plugging away for over a year working on the code at that point. Measured by things like code commits, they were amazingly productive. Thing was, there was no actual usable code. Firstly, the technology the team had been working with on both the frontend and the backend had changed multiple times, converting frameworks and methodologies repeatedly. Think: completely dumping a prototype-d Python framework application (with 100000s lines of template-generated MVC code) of and deciding to reimplement in Ruby-on-Rails, then after converting all their MVC concepts to 100000s of lines of MVC in RoR, they then converted to a symphony PHP framework (I wish I was kidding). When I arrived, the team was mulling switching to yet another framework (I want to say converting to nodejs on the backend?). The frontend had gone through many similar revisions as well.
The thing is, by many metrics, the team was actually amazingly productive. They had lots of meetings, had tons of commits, had massive numbers of bugs found/reported/fixed.
But, they had no idea about how to make the core of their product. They had no ability to answer basic questions, like, "how are you going to interface with the PSTN?" or even, like, "what database server are you planning on running in production?" Everything up to that point was based around running SQLite on their local dev machines. They didn't understand why they couldn't just continue to do so in production and moreover had no idea why (ORMs aside) their choice of database server might be important.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm sure there are good and great Indian (and other foreign) developers. I just don't think that they are more common than great local developers and moreover I don't think they are ever cheaper than great local developers.
Whereas a US citizen really only has jobs in the US to apply to. An American citizen isn't going to look at jobs in India for many reasons.
How is it fair that everyone in the world gets to compete for US jobs, but US citizens only get to compete for US jobs? H1B visas should be limited to the number of reciprocal visas to US citizens.
The lottery system of H1-B has already ensured the ones getting it are just lottery winners with a degree in their hand, nothing more and nothing less.
If US can actually ensure the best and bright get H1-B instead of sweatshops like Infosys/TCS/Wipro, that is beneficial. The argument that the current regime of Lottery H1-B is actually bringing the best and brightest from India to US is highly debatable.
The prepared restriction of $100,000 will do the same because undergrads aren't going to get $100k straight out of college.
That in turn is going to mean fewer international students in US universities. If they can't get jobs after spending 4 years and racking up college debt then they aren't going to come.
If the best and brightest aren't going to come to the US educational system then the US educational system is going to hurt.
[edit] My personal example of how students are abused under h1b was an old friend contacted me to do some contract dev work. I quoted him the old Buddy price of $50/hour since it was academic stat work and was intellectually stimulating. He balked and said he had only paid his phd post grad student from Vietnam $25/hour to work on it full time. This is a phd holder in computer science making $15/hour while working on additional coursework. Not slavery but not far from it.
Because you can rest assured someone with a 4yr college degree isn't getting a $100k job outside California and they won't be coming to the US in that case.
Unless you have sat in a classroom and learnt in a multi-cultural environment, you won't appreciate why learning with people from different backgrounds is good for you.
If H1B is for skilled migrants then why would college graduates by applying?
There are a lot of 22-24yr olds who start their professional careers on the work visa. H1B is the only work visa that you can get with relative ease after studying in the US. The other work visas are an even bigger mess.
Unless you are saying that anyone coming to study in US colleges for undergraduate programs should not look for a job here because the US only hires "skilled migrants"...
I can name quite a few exemplary journalists on US national media that would not have made it under the current or proposed H1B rules.
Maybe start thinking beyond your STEM bubble?
That's normal in Silicon Valley/San Francisco and NYC. In Seattle, it is normal at the larger tech companies.
I graduated from Purdue in Indiana. The best of the lot, with 4.0 GPAs, got in the region of $70-75k on H1Bs because $75k is a LOT of money in rural Indiana. Cummins was one of the biggest employers.
Perhaps another visa for those out of college would be more appropriate instead.
The most likely outcome is the H-1B program is modestly increased when it's revamped, to placate the silicon valley power base that does in fact still have extremely broad, extremely influential reach in DC (the tech industry is now by far the largest lobby group overall, surpassing telecom & defense).
Including the Washington Post, aka Jeff's Blog.
Regardless of lobbying, the incoming administration ran a campaign that was built on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their base wants that. They have to throw their base something. No one in Silicon Valley voted for them or fundraised for them.
This could totally happen, and it bothers me as a citizen because a lot of my co workers are on H1-Bs.
cough Thiel cough
The solution to the H1B fiasco is to let individual companies straight up bid on the 100,000 visas, irreguardless of nationality or occupation and be done with it.
Then we could put the money from this into a scholarship fund to pay for US citizens only.
20% of Santa Clara County voted for Trump. 20% of funds raised in Santa Clara County went to Trump. That's a small fraction by two-party system standards, but it's not no one.
20% of funds raised in Santa Clara County went to Trump
Vote % is from the registrar of voters: http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CA/Santa_Clara/64404... (from https://www.sccgov.org/sites/rov/Pages/Registrar-of-Voters.a...)
20% went to Republicans
Total donations: $59,683,708 Democrat donations: $28,362,650 (47% of Total) Republican donations: $7,613,361 (13% of Total)
It is weird that the percentage column reports 75% and 20% instead of 47% and 13% respectively but that exactly accounts for the extra 35%.
They are brought to the US, given around 40% less, to work jobs that could easily be worked by Americans. This helps the company's bottom line, and that's about it. But if you go and look at the tech companies, they don't really need help with that, many of those hiring the H1Bs have billions of dollars that they are sitting on. They could easily pay for American workers, they just don't want to. In a country of over 300 million people, you don't need more mediocre talent from India to work at 40% below average wage.
And India needs its talent as well. It's a backwater country that needs a lot of development. If those developers stay at home, maybe they can help develop the country. It badly needs it.
So to sum it up, America does not need more talent, it has plenty of its own in a population of 300 million people. The companies employing these workers are not employing them for their talent, they are employing them for price savings. They could afford to pay more. And Americans need more jobs, as the unemployment rate currently is astronomically high. Indians should stay in India, the country needs it.
If these people are so above average, then the companies should be willing to compensate them 40% more for their work. And so create a separate program for that. Which makes companies pay more for highly sought after talent, as compared to the locals. Let's see how they respond then.
We get rid of ALL limits on visas, as long as they go to people making 100k+ and the company pays a 25k tax to the government.
Win-win for the US, right?
The problem with the H1B visa is that it is a freaking lottery. We should NOT be assigning these visas randomly.
We should be auctioning them to the highest bidder. That would ensure that Americans don't get undercut, and the US gains a shit ton of tax revenue.
That in turn will drive the best and brightest to stay home and not come to the US educational system.
Keep in mind, also, that few of the ideas on this thread haven't already been implemented by some country (Canada, Australia, etc.). It would behoove politicians to look at the resulting data instead of voting on measures that affect groups they don't care to understand.
If they aren't then they won't be able to demand this high salary.
No one is going to get $100k straight out of college outside SF.
A lot of companies already do.
I used the fact that H1B salaries have to be reported to the government and made publicly available to very successfully argue for a significant raise at my employer - the H1B employees on my team were making up the majority of the top percentile.
I recognize this isn't universally true, but you can check out http://serebryakov.info/h1b/ and compare your company vs. big names, etc. You might be surprised at what you find, despite the narrative being 'all h1b workers are underpaid just to undercut local talent costs'.
Flat numbers are also silly, because then people finishing up their undergrad or masters here are now competing against people with 10 or 15 years of experience, which means they are going to be receiving a lot less pay but still have plenty of potential to be a positive gain on our country.
There is a $1500 fee as part of every H-1B visa application dubbed "American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 Education and Training Fee". See https://www.uscis.gov/forms/h-and-l-filing-fees-form-i-129-p... for details.
Also, aliens working on H-1B visas pay all the same taxes as local citizens.
Some of them are; many are not. Check out H-1B salaries at AmaFaceGoogSoft or SV startups.
> So to sum it up, America does not need more talent, it has plenty of its own in a population of 300 million people.
A large fraction of SV wealth has been created by people who first came on H-1B.
He went back to India and created a healthcare startup which now has nearly 100 employees.
If the US was operating in its best interest, it would try to keep the people it trains in the country.
No country has a monopoly on intelligence and eventually many countries will catch up to the US. It seems to me that a good way to accelerate the process would be to kick all of the H1-B folks out.
For people who really are the best and brightest, wouldn't they already be eligible for an O-1 or EB-1?
Primary use of H1-B I see here in Central time is for people without leverage who can be pushed around. I've known smart guys and dumb guys working here on that visa, and they both have some asshole dangling that visa over their heads.
If we really need these people, we should be giving them citizenship.
No, many of the best and brightest programmers won't qualify for EB-1 or O-1 visas. To understand why, please look up the requirements for these visas and judge how many of the best and brightest of American programmers you know "in Central time" would qualify.
> If we really need these people, we should be giving them citizenship.
Or at least a green card.
They're all ripe for abuse.
Now there might be a redeeming quality in creating some kind of patch so that applicants from a signal country can't all apply by January 2nd.
Personnaly I would rather make this a free market visa where whose who qualify have to have the higher bid to enter the US. As most of the time, high value correlates with high salary.
Auctioning visas may make it into a market, but don't delude yourself that it would be free.
Exactly, because auctioning visas presumes some kind of artificial limit to the number of them, that some politicians pull out of their asses. See elsewhere for my 'optimal number of immigrants' link, which explains this in further detail.